Pokémon TCG Store Owner Puts Out $6,000 Reward For Card Thief’s Capture, But Only If They’re Apprehended ‘Alive’ And ‘Breathing

A card shop owner in Japan’s Gifu Prefecture has offered a 1 million yen reward (roughly $6,100) for the capture of a Pokémon and One Piece TCG thief who raided their shop on July 22, but with the disclaimer that said thief must be returned in PSA 10 condition–or, as they put it, “alive” and “breathing.”

As spotted by Automaton , the Kaitorip Game shop owner in Gifu Prefecture’s Seki put out the bounty following a July 23 post on X . “Around 3:20 AM on July 22, 2026, Kaitorip was burglarized,” reads the initial post (machine translated from Japanese). “The shop was ransacked, and a large amount of stock was stolen. We are working urgently to resume operations and sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused to those who had planned to visit.”

こちらの人物に関する情報を募集開始します。 ✅生け捕り ¥1,000,000円 ✅有力情報 ¥50,000円 ✅拡散 ¥ご協力お願いします

情報提供者様の事はもちろん口外しません‼️皆様ご協力宜しくお願い致します。 直接、関警察に情報提供してくださっても構いません。 ☎️… https://t.co/h99tk8w8H7 pic.twitter.com/JHJyDPRSQC

— カイトリップ/岐阜カードショップ👑 (@kaitorip_game) July 25, 2026

However, while their first post didn’t receive too much attention online, Kaitorip Game’s follow-up post , which features CCTV footage of the masked perpetrator riffling through their store, clearly tickled several X users in Japan, after the store owner specifically requested that the thief be returned “alive” if anyone wished to claim the 1 million yen bounty on their head.

As a result, users on X began asking the store owner about the potential trade-in value of the thief, relative to the physical condition that he’s returned in, to which Kaitorip Game simply replied : “We will not reduce the amount as long as they are breathing.” Sounds like the type of condition that some TCG sellers on eBay would refer to as “lightly played.”

As of now, Kaitorip Game has yet to capture the thief, but I’d be extremely interested to find out if their mugshot would lead to them getting turned away from Pokémon stores in Japan once the facial recognition checks go into effect later this month.

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Indexed and credited by AIPROPX. Originating outlet: Kotaku. Open at source →